Monday, December 31, 2012

By Daniel Greenfield
Gov Health Care is a supply and demand problem. More medical staff is needed to cope with more demand. That leads to rationing and importing third world doctors. Both measures kill more patients leading to government health care becoming government death.

Three quarters of doctors struck off the medical register this year were trained abroad. Doctors trained overseas are five times more likely to be struck off than those trained in the UK.

On the list of the top 5 countries that you don’t want your doctor to be from, three countries, Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan are Muslim, and a fourth, Nigeria, has a 49 percent Muslim population.
The countries that you do want doctors from are Hong Kong, the United States, Slovakia Iran and New Zealand.
And in still more good news, some of these foreign doctors don’t actually speak that exotic language known as English.

Under the current system, British hospitals and medical agencies which hire doctors are not allowed to test the language skills of those from EU countries to seek if staff will be able to communicate safely.
Until now, Britain has interpreted EU law as meaning that doctors who qualify in any of the 27 countries must be free to work elsewhere, without restriction.
The coalition has promised to change the law, so that doctors will have to prove they can speak English before they get work here, but the changes are bogged down in discussions in Brussels.

Fortunately this should not matter because why would doctors need to be able to communicate with patients?frontpagemag

Hitler’s last days were not spent in his Berlin bunker, but in tranquil luxury in an Argentine hotel – at least, that’s the story that director/ producer Noam Shalev and researcher Pablo Weschler are trying to prove in their upcoming documentary, Revealed: Hitler in Argentina, set for release next year.

“We will never know the truth,” Shalev cautions, sitting in the offices of Highlight Films, the video production company he and Weschler run in Bnei Brak. “But there is enough evidence to build an alternative theory about what happened to Hitler.”

“No one believed the Russians’ story of Hitler’s suicide in the bunker,” says Weschler. “As early as the summer of 1945, there were headlines asking, ‘Where is Hitler?’ all over the world.”More...

German police arrested two suspects after a young woman of Turkish origin suffered serious burns in an acid attack in western Germany, police said.
The 20-year-old victim opened the door of her home in the town of Hilden early Saturday when one of the suspects doused her with sulphuric acid from a tin can, police said yesterday.
"The victim immediately felt strong burns in her face and called rescue services" who identified the liquid as an acid.
The woman was taken to a hospital. Her grandmother was also slightly hurt in the attack.
One of the suspects, a 22-year-old man of Turkish origin, was arrested and remanded in custody on Saturday. He told investigators he had asked an acquaintance to carry out the attack, police and the public prosecutor's office in the state capital of Duesseldorf said in a joint statement.
The other suspect, who is aged 18 and thought to have carried out the attack, turned himself in to the police yesterday.
"The attack was committed with sulphuric acid which the assailants bought in a pharmacy," authorities said.
The victim had reported the suspected attacker three times to the police for threatening her and using physical violence.
Authorities said the young man had been ordered to stay away from her. indianexpress

By Timothy Birdnow
It is as inevitable as the rising of the sun; the Left, when thwarted in their quest for power, suggests the use of lethal force to compel those who disagree.There is a nauseating litany of murders done by our betters in their pursuit of the Benthamite vision of "the greatest good for the most people" -- which in their minds equates to collectivization and socialism. You have Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Margaret Sanger, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot. Now we can add one more name to the list: Professor Richard Parncutt, Musicologist at Graz University in Austria.Parncutt has issued -- and later retracted after it the public outcry -- a manifesto calling for the execution of prominent "Climate Change Deniers". What is interesting is that Parncutt hates the death penalty and supports Amnesty International's efforts to end it.This would be a shocking thing for a college professor to do were it an isolated incident, but this call has been made a number of times in the past. For instance, an anonymous poster at the liberal website Talking Points Memo called for similar action, as did Climate Progress editor Joe Romm, who called for "deniers" to be strangled in their beds. Grist magazine writer David Roberts called for Nuremberg trials for "deniers" and NASA's James Hansen has likewise called for similar trials.The violent rhetoric has been ongoing -- and disturbing. Liberals in the United States have repeatedly tried to blame mass shootings on talk radio for inflaming the public, yet they are strangely silent about actual calls to violence on the part of environmentalists.Parncutt's argument is predicated on the notion that we know for a fact that human industrial emissions are causing Global Warming, err, Climate Change, err, Climate Disruption, err, whatever they are calling it today, and that this will lead to millions of deaths, so the public good would be served by murdering those who exercise their free speech and oppose the fundamental reorganization of the international order. (He also calls for the murder of the Pope for the Catholic Church's stand on contraception.) He claims that scientists have no interest in promoting AGW (ignoring the Climategate e-mails and the fact that money flows from governments into research in direct proportion to the apocalyptic nature of said research) and that they would get caught if they fudged data (ignoring Michael Mann who was caught on a number of occasions and still indulges in government funded scientific malpractice). He claims that millions will die from climate change, ignoring the possibility that a warmer, wetter world may actually increase agricultural output and make a better world. He ignores the fact that draconian "sustainable" environmental laws will drastically increase the price of everything, which will guarantee the deaths of millions of people in Third World countries.Perhaps Dr. Parncutt should volunteer for the first of these executions.What is ignored here is that it is the radical environmentalists who engage in murder and mayhem. It was Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who killed innocent people in his war against industrial civilization. We've had Daniel Andreas San Diego. We've had Chaim Nissim, Tre Arrow, Daniel McGowan, James Lee, Jeff Luers, Eric McDavid, Marie Mason and John Wade We've had organizations like the Earth Liberation Front. We have the proponents of Deep Ecology.In the past we had the Nazis, as Mark Musser has so eloquently illustrated here at American Thinker. Today we have the return of Nazi thinking through Climate Reductionism.And the first instinct of those on the Progressive Left is to murder their enemies. Parncutt is showing what is in his heart. Granted, he did apologize (no doubt to keep his position) but do we have any reason to fear him or his compatriots less? Especially now; they are in great anger because they know their time is short; Global Warming theory just didn't pan out the way they planned.Progressives have absolute faith in their intellectual powers, and will not allow facts to stand in their way. Scientism is the modern secular religion, and as Trevor Thomas points out in his article, scientism is not science, but rather a belief system bejeweled with scientific adornments. That there has been no global warming for over fifteen years (contrary to theory) is immaterial. That we see no acceleration of sea level rise, that Antarctica is not melting (see here and here ), that there is no tropical troposphere hot spot, and no major warming in the oceans, the theory is largely falsified. But there is far too much money in it, and too much power and prestige to let it go, so scientists continue to ignore the facts, as do the entire Progressive Left. It has become an article of faith, not a matter for reason. And it is a most useful article of faith, as it justifies world government and Progressive intervention in every aspect of life.So now the call for executions of "deniers" is becoming more public, and this will only metastasize as the situation grows more desperate for the Gang Green. They are reverting to type.Timothy Birdnow is a St. Louis based writer. His website is www.tbirdnow.mee.nu

A young woman of Turkish origin in Germany was seriously burned when sulfuric
acid was thrown over her during an unexpected attack at her home. Two young men,
also of Turkish origin, have been arrested in connection with the crime. Police
have not mentioned a motive for the attack.More...

Awad Tamimi, a thirteen year old Palestinian Arab girl, found internet fame when a video of her cursing at and kicking IDF soldiers was posted on YouTube. Today, the Turkish news agency “Anatolia” reported that “the brave Palestinian girl” and her mother met Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey at a hotel in Istanbul, where they had a short conversation. Erdogan gave some gifts to her family, and the two posed for photographs , before eating a meal together. “I give thanks to Prime Minister Erdogan for his hospitality—and his support for Palestine” she said.
Tamimi came to Turkey last week to receive an award from the Istanbul City Council for “courage”. She said she waved her fist in the face of Israeli soldiers as a way to “liberate Palestine”. She told reporters that she intends to study law as a way to fight for the “Palestinian cause.”Israeli-Turkish relations have deteriorated under the Islamist Erdogan, who has accused Israel of genocide, and described the country as “the main threat to regional peace” and “a terrorist state, which savagely massacres innocent children”. Erdogan told the Eurasian Islamic Council that “Those who speak of Muslims and terror side by side are turning a blind eye when Muslims are massacred en masse”. In recent months, Turkey has blocked Israel’s participation in NATO summits.
A video of Erdogan greeting Tamimi can be viewed below.
algemeiner

Sunday, December 30, 2012

A tractor working on the Temple Mount, Dec.
24th.Photo Credit: Yitzchak
Dvira

A demonstration was held last Wednesday (Dec. 26) at the northern entrance to
the Temple Mount, in protest of the Waqf’s continued destruction of
archeological artifacts on the holy site. The demonstrators, led by MK Aryeh
Eldad, called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene and to stop the
obliteration of these priceless antiques by the Waqf.

The Waqf, a Jordanian Muslim religious body entrusted with the management of
the Temple Mount, has been renovating the site for years. In the process, they
have been moving mounds of earth off the mountain. These piles contain numerous
archaeological artifacts from many centuries. In 2004, the High Court of Justice
passed a ruling prohibiting the removal of the dirt from the Temple Mount to
other locations until the contents are combed for artifacts.

Archaeologist Yitzchak Dvira has recently published a report about the Waqf’s
ongoing disregard of the High Court’s ruling. In his report he states that since
the ruling in 2004, large piles of earth have accumulated on the eastern side of
the Temple Mount, and the Waqf continues to move earth from the Temple Mount to
dump sites in East Jerusalem. Dvira has documented several recent incidents of
heavy machinery moving earth away from the Temple Mount. These actions have
resulted in the loss of artifacts important to understanding the Jewish,
Christian and Muslim history of the site.

Dvira and his crew have sifted through the piles of earth removed from the
Mount and have recovered many artifacts belonging to various historical periods.
They have recovered seals baring the names of priests mentioned in the book of
Jeremiah, support beams from the First Temple, remnants of the structure of the
Second Temple, arrow heads and horse-shoe nails from the Crusade period and even
artifacts from the Muslim period.

Dvira states that he sees dozens such artifacts every day in the mounds on
the side of the Temple Mount. He told Tazpit News Agency that he believes the
earth piles should be removed, but it should be done in a supervised fashion,
ensuring no further losses. Dvira submitted his report to the police who have
released a statement declaring that all construction on the Temple Mount is
under their close supervision, and that Dvira’s claims are incorrect. As of now,
all other supervisory agencies have not provided a response.

Dvira points out that all issues regarding the Temple Mount are overseen by
the Prime Minister’s Office, and he suspects that there is consent on their part
to the Waqf’s actions. PM Netanyahu met with King Abdullah of Jordan last week,
and Dvira believes they discussed issues related to the Temple Mount project.
The Jordanians have been pressuring the Israeli Government to allow the removal
of the earth mounds on the side of the Temple Mount.

Dvira and the Temple Mount organizations warn that this continued neglect and
disregard of the law will bring to further loss of historic relics. They intend
to petition the High Court once more soon.jewishpress

By Daniel Greenfield
Islamic law. It just makes people more moral.
Tunisia’s Islamist government, after spending weeks beating protesters, now finds itself in a complete meltdown as its foreign minister was caught having an affair and paying for it by embezzling money from the government, proving that he’s not only morally corrupt, but also ethically corrupt. And really cheap, which would be more of a virtue in a finance minister than a foreign minister.
Since Islam was founded on nepotism, see Caliph Abu Bakr, the Tunisian foreign minister is also the son-in-law of Tunisia’s hate-filled Islamist leader, Rashid Ghannouchi, who urged that the female blogger who exposed the affair be flogged showing his commitment to a modern secular Tunisia.

Tunisia’s Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem, from the ruling Islamist Ennahda party, has found himself at the center of an embarrassing scandal following accusations of public money embezzlement and involvement in an extramarital affair.
According to documents published by Tunisian journalist and blogger, Olfa Riahi, the Islamist minister spent several nights at the Sheraton hotel in Tunis with a woman and paid for his stay from the government’s coffers.
Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia’s ruling Islamist Ennahda party, has said the punishment of flogging should be introduced against people who are charged of slander, in reference to a female blogger who published documents accusing his son-in-law of corruption and of extramarital affair.
The Islamist leader said during a Friday sermon that the content published by Tunisian blogger Olfa Riahi reflects “values of hypocrites” punishable according to the Shariah law.

As opposed to having affairs, which is only punishable by flogging when it’s not being done by your foreign minister and son-in-law.frontpagemag

by Carl Savich | The Independent State of Croatia, which included Bosnia-Hercegovina, was unique and extraordinary during the Holocaust in that Croatians and Bosnian Muslims themselves murdered the Jews of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Croats and Bosnian Muslims committed genocide against not only their Jewish populations, but also against their Serbian Orthodox and Roma populations as well. A 1942 Zagreb exhibition, “Jews”, or “Zidovi”, showed how the NDH solved the Jewish question.More...

The German magazine Der Spiegel’s online edition today posted an obituary for George H.W. Bush. It was titled “The Better Bush.” Here is a screenshot of the obituary headline and text:

In fact, George H.W. Bush is still alive.

The premature death notice was scrubbed without an explanation as to why the magazine’s New York correspondent Marc Pitzke got the story completely wrong. Here is the website announcing that Pitzke’s article can no long be found.

Pitzke and Spiegel used the false death notice to explain why Bush senior “was” a better Bush than his son, George W.

Chiapas is one of Mexico's most exotic federal districts. But the magical forests, appealing Indian communities, colorful towns and intriguing archeological sites – that serve as main tourist attractions – hide a political hell.
In the mid-1990s, a leftist resistance group which calls itself The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) made Chiapas its home. Its attempts to fight the Mexican Army repeatedly failed, but the Zapatistas are still very active in the district's rural areas. Chiapas is considered a dangerous place, where every home has an arms arsenal of its own; and like many other places in Mexico, Chiapas' streets have become the battlefield where the government and local drug lords wrestle for dominance.
More...

By Daniel Greenfield
It would seem as if Bishop Ruiz’s brand of Liberation Theology has had the same effect on Chiapas as on Europe. Chiapas is poor, but it’s now also appearing to trend Islamic as any region under the influence of the left eventually does. When you kill the local religion and replace it with social justice, foreign religions eventually take its place.

In the mid-1990s, a leftist resistance group which calls itself The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) made Chiapas its home. Its attempts to fight the Mexican Army repeatedly failed, but the Zapatistas are still very active in the district’s rural areas. Chiapas is considered a dangerous place, where every home has an arms arsenal of its own; and like many other places in Mexico, Chiapas’ streets have become the battlefield where the government and local drug lords wrestle for dominance.
Chiapas, however, harbors an even more sinister secret: It is also a hub of radical Islamist activity.
Catholic Mexico is in the midst of a crisis of faith. According to a local businessman, who asked to remain anonymous, it is widely believed that within a decade, Chiapas will be the first federal state in Mexico to turn its back on the Church.
“The Muslim missionaries are very active there,” he said. “It’s hard to know exactly how many people have converted to Islam over the past few years.”
In December 2011, the US authorities released an indictment filed against Lebanese drug lord Ayman Juma, which exposed Hezbollah’s involvement with the Los Zetas drug cartel. According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Los Zetas is the most technologically advanced and most dangerous cartel operating in Mexico.
Juma was indicted in absentia for smuggling 85 tons of cocaine into the US and for laundering $850 million for Los Zetas. He was also accused of serving as a go-between for the Mexican crime syndicate and the Shiite terror group.
According to US officials, for a modest 8%-14% commission, Juma’s money laundering process would take about a week. The operation involved bank accounts in dozens of countries, making it virtually impossible to track the dirty money.
US intelligence concluded that Hezbollah has established sleeper cells, intelligence infrastructure and training bases in Mexico and other South American countries. The Shiite group is also helping the drug lords build smuggling tunnels under the US-Mexico border and satellite images show that they are nearly identical to the maze of tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border.
Hezbollah is also training the cartels’ operatives in the dubious art of explosives, helping drug lords improve their bomb-making skills.

Now why would they need to learn how to make better bombs?frontpagemag

Saturday, December 29, 2012

“With backing from the US, where the president must secure the support of Jewish lobby groups, and in Germany, where
coping with history, in the meantime, has a military component,
the Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an
ever-swelling war chant.”"Israel’s nuclear power is a danger to the already fragile peace of the world. This

statement has triggered an outcry.Because it’s true. And because it was made by a

German, Guenter Grass, author and Nobel Prize winner. That is the key point. One must, therefore, thank him for taking it upon himself to speak for us all.”“Israel is threatened by Islamic fundalmentalists in its neighborhood. But the Jews also have their fundamentalists, the ultra-orthodox Hareidim. They are not a small splinter group. They make up 10% of the Israeli population. They are cut from the same cloth as their Islamic fundamentalist opponents. They follow the law of revenge.”

“The fire burns in Libya, Sudan, Yemen, in countries which are among the poorest

on earth. But those who set the fires live elsewhere. Furious young people burn the

American, and recently, the German flag. They, too, are victims, just like the dead at

Benghazi and Sanaa. Whom does this all this violence benefit? Always the insane and unscrupulous. And this time it’s the U.S. Republicans and Israeli government.”

“Gaza is a place out of the end of times….1.7 million people live there on 360 sq.

kilometers. Israel incubates its own opponents there.”

all translated quotes from Spiegel Online - Jakob Augstein

Respected Die Welt columnist Henryk M. Broder, who has testified as an expert in the Bundestag about German anti-Semitism, labeled Augstein a “little Streicher” adding: “Jakob Augstein is not a salon anti-Semite, he’s a pure anti-Semite…an offender by conviction who only missed the opportunity to make his career with the Gestapo because he was born after the war. He certainly would have had what it takes.”

Friday, December 28, 2012

BONN. A 24-year-old Indian student, who was brutally assaulted here on Christmas eve by two men demanding him to convert to Islam, has been discharged from hospital after his condition improved, German police said on Friday.
The student, whose identity has not been revealed, is recovering well and his injuries are not as serious as thought initially, a police spokesman said.
Meanwhile, police in Bonn are continuing their search for the two men who had demanded the student to convert to Islam and threatened to cut off his tongue if he refused.
So far, the police have no concrete information on the motive of the attack, but they have a strong suspicion that Islamic radicals may have been involved in the incident.
Therefore, a special police unit has taken up the investigations and it is cooperating closely with the state prosecutor in Bonn, the spokesman said.
The victim told the police that he was walking to a pub shortly after 10 on Christmas eve when two strangers approached him, picked up conversation and demanded him to convert to Islam.
They threatened to cut off his tongue if he refuses, the police commissioner in Bonn said in a press statement earlier.
As he tried to get rid of them and walked further, they followed him and knocked him down from behind. When he fell down, one of the assailants gave him a cut on his tongue, the statement said.
After the attackers drove away from the scene in a car, a passer-by helped the student to call an ambulance, which took him to a near-by hospital.
He was bleeding heavily from his head and from his mouth when the ambulance and police officials arrived at the scene, the statement said.
Police issued an appeal for help from eyewitnesses, who could provide vital clues to track down the two assailants. timesofindia

By Ed Koch
In his December 26 New York Times editorial, Tom Friedman wrote in support of former U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel and the possibility that he will be chosen by President Barack Obama as Secretary of Defense. He stated: “So, yes, Hagel is out of the mainstream. That is exactly why his voice would be valuable right now. Obama will still make all the final calls, but let him do so after having heard all the alternatives.” By “mainstream,” Friedman apparently means overwhelmingly supportive of Israel. Hagel’s position is, as Friedman states, “out of the mainstream” with respect to Israel.
Imagine what would happen across our government if President Obama put that course of action into effect.
Friedman is in effect saying to President Obama that he should choose, as an example, a Secretary of the Treasury who believes in cutting expenses in the budget with no increase in taxes for the wealthy, noting that as President he makes the policy and can overrule his appointees; choose a Secretary of the Interior who has the same philosophy as many Alaskans which is to open every square inch of Alaska for oil production. After all, as Friedman says, the President makes the final decision. In the Defense Department, put someone in charge who disagrees with the current stated policy of the President and the Congress toward Israel. We’ve heard the President say, “I’ve got Israel’s back.” Hagel couldn’t care less; he’d rather talk to Hamas. Hagel’s point of view, according to Aaron Miller in his 2008 book, “The Much Too Promised Land,” is clearly hostile to Israel. Miller wrote: “The American Israel Public Affairs Committee comes knocking with a pro-Israel letter, Hagel continued, and ‘then you’ll get eighty or ninety senators on it. I don’t think I’ve ever signed one of the letters’ – because, he added, they were ‘stupid.” Hagel also said, ‘The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here,’ but ‘I’m a United States senator. I’m not an Israeli senator.’” For the record, more Christians support Israel in the U.S. than do Jews, who are a much smaller part of the U.S. population.
In addition, in government, you generally rely on the people you select for high office to let them run their departments. You don’t micromanage them, and no top-notch appointee would allow micromanagement by the President.
People give Tom Friedman lots of space and respect when he writes on Israel, undoubtedly assuming that as a Jew, he must be a supporter of Israel. I do not believe that assumption to be correct, because I recall his Times column of April 3 in which he urged the Palestinians to engage in another intifada using rocks to attack Israeli Jews.
When I was in Israel in 1991, I was struck on the head during the then intifada and needed nine stitches to close the wound. I was lucky that the jagged stone struck my head and not my eyes. Otherwise, I might have been blinded.
Chuck Hagel is not an evil man. He simply does not support the position that Israel is our ally, and I believe he would prefer closer relationships with the Muslim states in the region by reducing the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, which is what the Muslim, and certainly the Islamist, states desire. That is his right, but that philosophy should deny him the position of Secretary of Defense. Nor in my opinion does he believe that the Islamist Arab countries are hostile to the U.S. and Western civilization.
The leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, has called for the total destruction of Israel. The Hamas government is responsible for hurling 8,000 rockets into Israel since 2005. Human Rights Watch, normally critical of Israel, this week accused Hamas of war crimes against Israel, because their rockets deliberately targeted Israeli civilians. Does it make any sense for Friedman to suggest that Hagel’s attitude of seeking to engage Hamas “to see if it can be moved from its extremism” might be effective? There were people in the 1930s who suggested the same about Hitler and the Nazis. Hamas is now even stronger than before because its big brother and ally the Muslim Brotherhood governs Egypt and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, one of the Brotherhood’s leaders, has made clear his support of Hamas.
When will we learn that Islamist governments mean what they say when they threaten Israel with extermination and condemn the U.S., Europe and Israel and their Western culture and values?
I also view Tom Friedman’s supportive attitude to the so-called Arab Spring — which has produced Islamist governments toppling authoritarian Arab governments which were at least friendly to the U.S. — as dangerously wrong. Hitler came to power in Germany legally as have many of these Islamist governments. That doesn’t make them our friends nor should the President select a Secretary of Defense who, if confirmed, will be cheered by the enemies of the U.S. and Israel in the Muslim world.
In his December 13 column, Tom Friedman made one of his worst statements, showing his strong bias against Israel: “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. The real test is what would happen if Bibi tried to speak at, let’s say, the University of Wisconsin. My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away, not because they are hostile, but because they are confused.”
Friedman has not apologized for these outrageous remarks, stating only that he regretted the words and should have chosen other terms. I suggest that it is Tom Friedman who is confused. I don’t believe even if he did apologize that the apology means anything and, in most cases, such apologies are simply an effort to end the discussion.algemeiner

Why are Swedish officials so anxious to deport Reza Jabbari? Why won't they explain why? Why are people with weaker cases for asylum allowed to stay in Sweden? It couldn't have anything to do with a policy of favoring the large and growing Muslim minority there, now, could it? Or are the Swedish officials in question just so certain that Islam is a Religion of Peace, and so full of the soothing nonsense of Western Islamic apologists who claim that Islam has no death penalty for apostasy, that they're certain that Reza Jabbari faces no danger in Iran?More...

Pic: rickey.orgBy Kathryn Jean Lopez
Charles Durning died this week, and a quick biography doesn’t quite cut it for the character actor from Tootsie, especially when there is this:

He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his Army unit to survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg. Later he was bayoneted by a young German soldier whom he killed with a rock. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.
In later years, he refused to discuss the military service for which he was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.
“Too many bad memories,” he told an interviewer in 1997. “I don’t want you to see me crying.”
Tragedy also stalked other members of his family. Durning was 12 when his father died, and five of his sisters lost their lives to smallpox and scarlet fever.

And this:

“Not only was Charlie a World War II hero but he was also a hero to his family. Charlie loved Christmas and if he could have chosen a time to pass, he would have chosen this day,” said a statement from his stepdaughter, Anita Gregory, released Tuesday by Ana Martinez, spokeswoman for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
“He loved that holiday and played Santa Claus many times in films and TV shows,” Gregory said. “Charlie lived the spirit of Christmas each and every day of his life. He taught me to believe that nothing was impossible. He brought joy and a smile to everyone’s life.”

Thursday, December 27, 2012

The European Court of Human Rights threw out a lawsuit filed against the European Union (EU) that would have forced the EU to reveal how it funds various non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Jerusalem-based nonprofit NGO Monitor filed the lawsuit nearly three years ago, arguing that the European Commission (EC)—the EU’s executive body—allegedly refused to release funding documents despite repeated requests by NGO Monitor. The European Freedom of Information law states that such information must be made freely available upon request. The EC, however, cited reasons of “public security,” “privacy” and “commercial interests” for keeping the documentation secret, Haaretz reported.
NGO Monitor researchers identified that the EC provided nearly $48 million from June 2005 until the lawsuit was filed to nongovernmental organizations working in Israel and Palestinian Authority territory, many of which, according to the nonprofit, seek to legally isolate Israel and conduct boycott campaigns against the Jewish state. After the current lawsuit was thrown out, the court also ordered NGO Monitor to pay the costs for the EC’s legal defense.
Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor and a political science professor at Bar Ilan University, condemned the human rights court’s decision, stating that “for over 10 years the EU has been keeping the information regarding funding of NGOs in complete secrecy.”
“[The EC’s] explanation is public security and commercial interests,” Steinberg said, according to Haaretz. “My conclusion is that they have something to hide. In addition to a violation of basic principles of government transparency, the secret funding is trying to manipulate the democratic process in Israel. We will continue to seek the relevant documents in order to provide the missing transparency.”algemeiner

Police say an Indian student in Germany has been attacked and injured by suspected Islamic extremists who accosted him and demanded that he convert to Islam.
Police spokesman Frank Piontek said on Thursday that two attackers in the western German city of Bonn severely beat the 24-year-old and then slashed his tongue with a knife.
Police say the attackers walked up to the student in a city street late Monday and demanded that he convert to Islam then beat him up after he refused to do so.
The student, whose identity wasn't given in line with German privacy rules, was taken to a hospital for treatment. He was released a day later.
The Bonn police's department for politically motivated crimes is investigating.
hindustantimes

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

An Indian student in Bonn reports that on Christmas Eve he was attacked and
injured by two men who demanded that he convert to Islam. The media generally
have difficulties finding the proper spin in reports of “brown-on-brown”
violence, so it will be interesting to see how the German MSM handles the
follow-up on this story.More...

The arrogance of Obama Inc. and everyone associated with it is sometimes downright mindblowing. They don’t just lie to your face, they even lie about the lies that they’re telling.
Even though Benghazigate goes much farther up the ladder than the three State Department officials who resigned after the fake “independent” report that exonerated Hillary and everyone higher up, three officials were chosen as political sacrifices. Their resignation was supposed to close the book on Benghazigate.
Except they’re still working in the State Department. They just switched desks.

The four officials supposedly out of jobs because of their blunders in the run-up to the deadly Benghazi terror attack remain on the State Department payroll — and will all be back to work soon, The Post has learned.
The highest-ranking official caught up in the scandal, Assistant Secretary of State Eric Boswell, has not “resigned” from government service, as officials said last week. He is just switching desks. And the other three are simply on administrative leave and are expected back.
The four were made out to be sacrificial lambs in the wake of a scathing report issued last week that found that the US compound in Benghazi, Libya, was left vulnerable to attack because of “grossly inadequate” security.
State Department leaders “didn’t come clean about Benghazi and now they’re not coming clean about these staff changes,” a source close to the situation told The Post., adding, the “public would be outraged over this.”
Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton “has accepted Eric Boswell’s decision to resign as assistant secretary for diplomatic security, effective immediately.” What Nuland omitted was that Boswell gave up only the presidential appointment as assistant secretary, not his other portfolios.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) told The Post this is “yet another ruse about the tragedy of Benghazi… State Department officials proclaimed . . . that heads would roll . . . Now we see that the discipline is a lie and all that has happened is the shuffling of the deck chairs.”

You know a compulsive liar really has contempt for you when he doesn’t even bother trying to make his lies sound believable.frontpagemag

It used to be that few Jews would consider Berlin, or even Germany at all, as a tourist destination. But that has changed as Berlin has become a top European draw, particularly for young people and artsy types.
For Jewish visitors, it’s not despite the history, but largely because of it that Berlin is so compelling. The place where the destruction of European Jewry was planned is now a site of Jewish resurgence, and Jewish visitors would do well to see both sides of the equation.
When it comes to history, the Holocaust takes center stage, of course.
A good place to start is at some of the historical sites that have been turned into exhibits on Holocaust history. The House of the Wannsee Conference on the southwestern edge of Berlin marks the place where the Third Reich came up with the Final Solution in January 1942. The powerful exhibit there traces the history of the Third Reich’s plans to eradicate Jews, including both public propaganda and behind-the-scenes machinations. A table in the room where the conference was held contains facsimiles of the one surviving protocol of the meeting, in which euphemisms for mass murder are rampant.
Likewise, Gleis 17 — track 17 at the Grunewald commuter railway station outside the city center — is an exhibit of living history. It was from this station that tens of thousands of Jews were deported to concentration camps and death camps in the east. There are a few memorials here, including the one on the platform itself that records the dates on which Berlin’s Jews were transported, how many of them were deported and to which destinations.
Jewish tour guide Yael Schlesinger, who was born and raised here, says she favors the Rosenstraße memorials that commemorate the famous, non-violent protest in 1943 by non-Jewish wives against the imprisonment of their Jewish husbands. It is one of the only examples of a successful protest against the mistreatment of Jews in Germany.
“My great-grandfather Kurt Caro was one of the detainees, and my great grandmother Frieda Caro was one of the protesters,” Schlesinger says. “These people — and those who survived in the underground — formed the beginnings of the postwar Berlin Jewish community.”
Perhaps the most famous Holocaust monument in the city is the famed national Holocaust memorial in central Berlin, which opened in 2005 after years of debate and discussion. The memorial — created at the initiative of a non-Jewish activist — includes an above-ground, abstract monument designed by American Jewish architect Peter Eisenman — 2,711 tombstone-like slabs of stone of varying heights that occupy an entire city block — and a subterranean exhibit that tells the story of the destruction of the 6 million.
The story of the perpetrators and their postwar prosecution is on display a short walk away, at the Topography of Terror archive and exhibit, where the Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office once stood. The site itself is impressive: Outside, you see a crumbling remnant of the Berlin Wall; one level down are the cellar walls of the Gestapo headquarters, revealed during post-unification excavations. The new archive building itself, which overlooks these two layers of history, contains a permanent photographic and auditory exhibit on the “banality of evil,” as the political theorist Hannah Arendt put it. It traces how ordinary Germans became war criminals in the massive genocide against the Jews.
Germany’s Jewish history is about more than the Holocaust, of course. There are traces of Jewish life here going back nearly 2,000 years, according to the Jewish Museum Berlin. This museum, which opened in 2001 and remains one of the most popular museums in Germany, is the best place in the city to learn about that history. The museum, which is inundated with school groups, also provides an introduction to Jewish traditions and holidays. Watching non-Jewish Germans peering at the circumcision tools, stepping under a chuppah and checking out the bedecked Shabbat table under glass offers a sense of how Jews living here sometimes feel: like they are on display.
A gem of a museum — doable in an hour — is the Centrum Judaicum in the Mitte neighborhood, housed in the same building as Berlin’s New Synagogue and the offices of the Berlin Jewish Community. Its permanent exhibit provides an impression of the diversity of Jewish life in Berlin before its destruction — from Regina Jonas, the first woman ever ordained as a rabbi, to what happened here during the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938.
To get a taste for Jewish life in Berlin today, it’s good to get away from the museums. Jewish life has ballooned in Germany since the fall of the Soviet Union sent nearly 200,000 Russian-speaking Jews into the country, transforming what until then had been a community numbering just 30,000.
In the capital city, however, much of the Jewish growth has come from Israelis. Though the official number of Jews in Berlin is 11,000, up from 4,000 two decades ago, locals believe there may be as many as 30,000 Jews here, half of them Israeli expats who have come for Berlin’s thriving cultural and arts scene. The Hebrew language website Israelisinberlin.de and Aviv Russ’ weekly Kol Berlin radio show offer a taste of Israeli life here. Those interested in clubbing it Jewish style can also see if Israeli expat Aviv Netter is planning one of his famous dance parties by visiting the Facebook group Berlin Meschugge. Or they can party with young Jews from Berlin’s Russian-Jewish scene at the Russendisko dance parties of Jewish writer and DJ Wladimir Kaminer.
If you time your visit to the city’s annual Days of Jewish Culture, held in late summer for about two weeks, you’ll see not only world-class musicians and other Jewish and Israeli performers in Berlin — but also the undying fascination non-Jewish Germans have with all things Jewish. Likewise, the annual Berlin-Potsdam Jewish Film Festival, which is scheduled for between April 29 and May 12, and offers many films and events in English.
If you want to meet local Jews, Shabbat services are a safe bet. The official community umbrella organization provides a list, and then there are the alternatives: the intimate Ohel HaChidush Jewish Renewal congregation, whose members often prepare their own dairy meal following their New Agey, musical service; Chabad, which offers services in both west and east Berlin; and Lauder Yeshurun Orthodox services. It’s a good idea to get in touch before going. And bring your passport with you; there is a security check at all community synagogues.
timesofisrael

A senior Hamas leader has called for a third intifada, including suicide bus bombings in Israel.
Hamas Jerusalem bureau chief Ahmed Halabiyeh on Tuesday called for new, violent action against Israel on Tuesday, saying that that ”we must renew the resistance to occupation in any possible way, above all through armed resistance.” He called for “a third intifada to save the Aksa Mosque and Jerusalem.”algemeiner

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Christianity is close to extinct in the Middle East.
The only place in the region where Christians are free, and indeed thriving, is the Jewish state.
In contrast, a new study, highlighted at the Telegraph, warns that “Christians suffer greater hostility across the world than any other religious group” and quotes estimates that “between half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have left the region or been killed in the past century.”
Yet, like a holiday ritual, Harriet Sherwood, in the spirit of Phoebe Greenwood’s ugly Guardian piece last year (‘If Jesus were to come this year Bethlehem would be closed’, Guardian, Dec. 22, 2011) chose to advance, as if by rote, a predictable Christmas tale of Israeli oppression against Christians.
Sherwood’s piece, Bethlehem Christians feel squeeze of settlements, avoids entirely any context about the comparative treatment of Christians in the Middle East, and myopically obsesses on the putative threat to Christians posed by Israeli “settlements” in the Jerusalem region.
Sherwood writes:

In the birthplace of Jesus, the impact of Israeli settlements and their growth has been devastating.

Sherwood then allows the following quote by Mahmoud Abbas to go unchallenged:

For the first time in 2,000 years of Christianity in our homeland, the Holy Cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem have been completely separated by Israeli settlements, racist walls and checkpoints.

First, as CAMERA pointed out in response to Bob Simon’s 60 Minute piece:

Most of the travellers arrive to Bethlehem via Jerusalem.Bus no. 21 runs from the Arabic Bus Station at the Damascus Gate (“Bab el-’Amoud”) in East Jerusalem via Beit Jala to Bethlehem. The average trip length is 40 minutes and costs 7 NIS.

The Palestine Visitor Information Center helpfully suggests other bus routes, the option of driving, or even, for the physically ambitious, a walking route.
There’s no warning on their site reflecting Abbas’s claim that the two Biblical cities are cut off.
Sherwood continues:

The city is further hemmed in by the vast concrete and steel separation barrier, bypasses connecting settlements with Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and Israeli military zones. With little room to expand, it is now more densely populated than Gaza, according to one Palestinian official.

The Palestinian official was lying.
According to the PA’s own statistics, Bethlehem’s population density is 3,383 person/km, while the density of Gaza is higher at 4,603 person/km. It should also be noted that Gaza is not even in the top 50 of most densely populated places on earth. (If the PA official was comparing Bethlehem to Gaza City, as opposed to the entire Gaza strip, naturally the disparity in density would be even greater).
Sherwood then turns to economic issues, writing:

The wall already snakes around most of Bethlehem, its 8m-high concrete slabs casting a deep shadow, both literally and metaphorically. At the Christmas Tree restaurant, where there are almost no takers for the “Quick Lunches” on offer, business has slowed to a standstill since the wall blocked what was once the main Jerusalem-Bethlehem road. Scores of shops along the closed-off artery have shut down altogether.
…
…the lack of routine access has had a dire impact on businesses and employment rates.

The suggestion that Bethlehem is economically depressed is another profound distortion, as the city has been experiencing an economic boom over the last few years, with the number of tourists (and hotel stays) having dramatically increased over the last few years.
In fact, the narrative advanced in Sherwood’s passage was contradicted by Sherwood herself, in a piece published a couple of days earlier (Dec. 21), ‘No room at the inn – but Bethlehem’s popularity is a boon to Palestinians‘, where she wrote:

Tens of thousands of pilgrims and tourists are expected to visit the birthplace of Jesus over Christmas. All of the West Bank city’s 3,700 hotel rooms are likely to be filled, with thousands more visitors making day trips from nearby Jerusalem.
This year has seen a 20% growth in the numbers of visitors to Bethlehem compared with the previous year, and officials hope for a further rise in tourism to Palestine next year. The biggest number of tourists – more than a quarter – come from Russia.
Officials are heartened by the increasing number of visitors who are opting to stay in hotels in Bethlehem rather than just making the trip from Jerusalem. The number of overnight stays is expected to reach 1.5m by the end of this year.
The city is planning to increase the number of hotel beds, offer improved packages and invest in marketing and promotion…

Undeterred, Sherwood continues:

Bethlehem has one of the highest rates of unemployment of all West Bank cities, at 18%, says Vera Baboun, who was elected as its first female mayor in October. “We are a strangulated city, with no room for expansion due to the settlements and the wall.”

However, according to the PA’s own statistics, any suggestion of a causation between the security fence and unemployment in Bethlehem is not supportable. In 2002 for instance, two years before the fence’s completion in 2004*, the unemployment rate was higher (at 20%) than the current rate. Inexplicably, unemployment in Bethlehem actually dropped in 2005 and 2006 to 13.4 and 13.7% respectively. So, at the very least, unemployment figures for Bethlehem don’t seem at all to correspond with the fence’s construction history.
Sherwood’s narrative then descends even further with the following passage:

In a booklet to mark Christmas 2012, Kairos Palestine, a Christian alliance, says: “Land confiscation, as well as the influx of Israeli settlers, suggest that there will be no future for Palestinians (Christian or Muslim) in [this] area. In this sense, the prospect of a clear ‘solution’ grows darker every day.

However, Kairos, as CAMERA has documented, is certainly not a group dedicated at all to “peace, love and understanding”.
A 2009 Kairos document calls the Israeli “occupation” a “sin against God,” and characterizes Palestinian acts of terror as “legal resistance.”
The document also states that if “there were no occupation, there would be no resistance, no fear and no insecurity.”
As CAMERA asked in response to such specious occupation causation:

Really? Then why did the rocket attacks against Israel increase after it withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005?

More importantly, the Kairos quote insidiously suggests something of a policy of ethnic cleansing (Israel’s “solution”) of both Muslims and Christians in the West Bank, a suggestion which is matched in sheer malice by the demographic lie. Here are a couple of population facts:

The population of Christians in Bethlehem and surrounding area has increased since 1967 (when Israel took control of the West Bank), which (as CAMERA noted) stands in “contrast to the decline of the Christian population in the West Bank when it was under Jordanian control.”

Additionally, as Akus noted in a post last Christmas, the Church of England, for instance, is quite aware of the demographic realities for Christians in the Middle East. A report by the Church noted the following:

While Christians have fled from areas controlled by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, in Israel their numbers have grown rapidly. The Statistical Abstract of Israel 2008 reports that Israel’s Christian population grew from 120,600 in 1995 to 151,600 in 2007, representing a growth rate of 25 per cent — a rate faster than the growth of the country’s Jewish population.

That the place in the Middle East where the population of Christians is growing just happens to be the sole country where Islamism is not a serious threat is essential to understanding the fate of Christianity in that part of the world – context about the contrasting religious freedom, tolerance and democratic values in the Middle East which Harriet Sherwood’s reports on the region do not provide.
Finally, the report linked to in the first sentence of this post concluded that the “lion’s share” of persecution faced by Christians arises in countries where Islam is the dominant faith”. Specifically, the reports adds, “the most common threat to Christians abroad is militant Islam“, and further argues that oppression against Christians in Muslim countries is often ignored because of a fear that criticism will be seen as “racism.”
Such religious bigotry – in places like Gaza, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and elsewhere - includes physical violence, attacks on churches, forced conversions, and the imposition of Sharia law.
Moreover, is it really even debatable that the antagonist in Sherwood’s Christmas tale, Israel’s security fence, was only necessitated by terror attacks launched largely by adherents to the same brand of radical Islamism which has prompted so many Middle East Christians to flee?
While truly fearless crusading dailies would boldly tackle the real cleansing of Christians from Arab lands as the result of Islamist militancy, my blog CiF Watch does not monitor a broadsheet which engages in such truly courageous journalism.
We monitor the Guardian.(*Fence construction information obtained from Dany Tirza who served as the IDF’s chief architect for the Security Fence.)algemeiner

Cameroon’s Special Forces have been deployed to foil an imminent raid by Sudanese poachers who for eight weeks earlier this year slaughtered half the population of elephants for their ivory at one of the country’s wildlife reserves.
The poachers have been attempting to take park guards in northern Cameroon by surprise by exploiting greater ground cover that has sprouted in the rainy season, according to international conservation body World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
“This is the same group of poachers that in early 2012 travelled more than 1,000km on horseback from northern Sudan across the Central African Republic and Chad to kill over 300 elephants in the Bouba N’Djida National Park in northern Cameroon,” WWF said.
The heavily armed and well coordinated poachers, who had told local villagers of their plans to kill as many elephants as possible, claimed they had killed as much as 650 out of some 1,000 that roamed the park.
The elephant population in Cameroon and in central Africa is estimated to have been halved, mainly by poachers, between 1995 and 2007 with the number of elephants killed still on the rise…
“The millions of dollars their poaching raid must have brought in will allow them to replenish their weapons stores.”

And Al Qaeda in Somalia is also getting in on the act

Several Somali elders said that the Shabab, the militant Islamist group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, recently began training fighters to infiltrate neighboring Kenya and kill elephants for ivory to raise money.
One former Shabab associate said that the Shabab were promising to “facilitate the marketing” of ivory and have encouraged villagers along the Kenya-Somalia border to bring them tusks, which are then shipped out through the port of Kismayo, a notorious smuggling hub and the last major town the Shabab still control.

Islam… making the world a worse place one atrocity at a time. No creature on earth is safe from the evil that Mohammed spawned.frontpagemag

Richard Parncutt, Professor of Systematic Musicology, University of Graz, Austria, reckons people like Watts, Tallbloke, Singer, Michaels, Monckton, McIntyre and me (there are too many to list) should be executed. He’s gone full barking mad, and though he says these are his “personal opinions” they are listed on his university web site.
For all the bleating of those who say they’ve had real “death threats“, we get discussions about executing skeptics from Professors, wielding the tyrannical power of the state. Was he paid by the state to write these simplistic, immature, “solutions”? Do taxpayers fund his web expenses? (And what the heck is systematic musicology?)More...

By Carl Savich
Propaganda has always been a part of war. During World War I, the British government established a propaganda agency at Wellington House under Charles Masterman. It was initially focused on the U.S., its activities geared to drawing the U.S. into the war on the side of Great Britain. The British government also created two other propaganda agencies, the Neutral Press Committee under George Herbert Mair, which supplied news and information to neutral nations concerning the war, and the Foreign Office News Department, which issued official pronouncements on British foreign policy. In addition, there was the War Propaganda Bureau which produced publications for use in allied and neutral countries. The other propaganda outlets were the War Office Directorate of Military Operations, department MI7, and the Admiralty, which circulated reports and propaganda to the press in military zones. These departments and agencies overlapped, lacking any centralized control or supervision. In 1916, the propaganda agencies were centralized under the Foreign Office. These agencies and departments were united in February, 1917 into the Department of Information, which became the Ministry of Information in March, 1918.More...

Militant Islam is wiping out Christianity in the Muslim Middle East, according to a new study by the British think tank Civitas.
“Christianity is in serious danger of being wiped out in its biblical heartlands because of Islamic oppression,” wrote the report’s author, journalist Rupert Shortt.
Israel, the only country in the region where Jews, Muslim and Christians are free to practice their religion, was not covered in the report. Israel opened up churches and other holy sites to Christians in Judea and Samaria and all of Jerusalem after Jordan fled the areas in the Six-Day War in 1967. Jordan prohibited Christians from visiting the site during its occupation of the area form 1947 to 1967.
Since the rise of the Islamic Hamas movement, Christians have been on the run in Israel, but mainstream media have tried to blame Israel for the diminishing Christian community, particular in Bethlehem.
Violence against Christians by Muslims in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, outside of Israel, has been ignored by “blind” politicians, largely because it is politically incorrect to criticize Muslims and then risk being accused of “racism.”
The refusal of young Christians in the West to become “radicalized” and mount violent protests against the attacks on their faith also helps to explain the “blind spot” about “Christianophobia” in influential liberal Western circles, wrote Shortt.
He traced the rise of Christianophobia in Egypt to the early 1970s when the quadrupling of oil prices gave Saudi Arabian religious extremists the material means to export their intolerant views around the world.
Civitas stated that “Shortt illustrated the mounting hostility to Christians by quoting the Salafist website ‘Guardians of the Faith’, which published an article saying 'Being a Muslim girl whose role models are the wives of the Prophet, who were required to wear the hijab, is better than being a Christian girl, whose role models are whores.'"
Converts to Christianity often are killed in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Iran, the report said and converts who remain alive may be subjected to heavy legal punishment.

Opinion polls consistently show that growing numbers of ordinary German citizens are worried about the consequences of decades of multicultural policies, as well the emergence of a parallel legal system based on Islamic Sharia law.

Post-Christian Europe became noticeably more Islamized during 2012.
As the rapidly growing Muslim population makes its presence felt in towns and cities across the continent, Islam is transforming the European way of life in ways unimaginable only a few years ago.
Some of the more notable Islam-related controversies during 2012 occurred in Germany, where the Muslim population has jumped from around 50,000 in the early 1980s to more than 4.5 million today.
What follows is a brief chronological review of some of the main stories involving the rise of Islam in Germany during 2012.
In January, German authorities welcomed the start of the New Year by officially confirming that they are monitoring German-language Internet websites that are critical of Muslim immigration and the Islamization of Europe.
In a January 4, 2012 interview with the Berliner Zeitung and the Frankfurter Rundschau, Manfred Murck, the director of the Hamburg branch of the German domestic intelligence agency (the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV)), said his organization was studying whether German citizens who criticize Muslims and Islam on the Internet are fomenting hate and are thus criminally guilty of "breaching" the German constitution.
The BfV's move marked a significant setback for the exercise of free speech in Germany and came amid a months-long smear campaign led by a triple alliance of left-wing German multicultural elites, sundry Muslim groups and members of the mainstream media, who have been relentless in their efforts to discredit the so-called counter-jihad movement (also known as the "Islamophobes") in Germany.
In a country stifled by decades of political correctness, the counter-jihad activists and bloggers have been giving a voice to millions of frustrated Germans who see the harm being wrought by the cult of multiculturalism.
Opinion polls consistently show that growing numbers of ordinary German citizens are worried about the consequences of decades of multicultural policies that have encouraged mass immigration from Muslim countries. Germans are especially concerned about the refusal of millions of Muslim immigrants to integrate into German society, as well as the emergence of a parallel legal system in Germany based on Islamic Sharia law.
Also in January, Muslims in Duisburg, one of the most Islamized cities in Germany, clamored for the right to turn empty churches into mosques. All of the churches are located in the gritty Hamborn and Marxloh districts in northern Duisburg where Islam has already replaced Christianity as the dominant religion, and where several Catholic churches have been abandoned.
In Germany as a whole, more than 400 Roman Catholic churches and more than 100 Protestant churches have been closed since 2000, according to one estimate. Another 700 Roman Catholic churches are slated to be closed over the next several years.
By contrast, Germany is now home to more than 200 mosques (including more than 40 mega-mosques), 2,600 Muslim prayer halls and a countless number unofficial mosques. Another 128 mosques are currently under construction, according to the Zentralinstitut Islam-Archiv, a Muslim organization based in Germany.
Meanwhile, on January 16 one of the oldest universities in Germany inaugurated the country's first taxpayer-funded department of Islamic theology. The Center for Islamic Theology at the University of Tübingen is the first of four planned Islamic university centers in Germany.
The German government claims that by controlling the curriculum, the school, which is to train Muslim imams and Islamic religion teachers, will function as an antidote to "hate preachers." (Most imams currently in Germany are from Turkey and many of them do not speak German.)
But the idea has been fiercely criticized by those who worry the school will become a gateway for Islamists who will introduce a hardline brand of Islam into the German university system.
In February, the interior minister of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Jochen Hartloff, said he favored the introduction of Islamic Sharia law in Germany. In an interview with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Hartloff, a Socialist, said that using the Islamic moral code "is certainly conceivable when it comes to questions pertaining to civil law." Hartloff said using Sharia law to resolve family law issues such as alimony, divorce or financial contracts "could have a pacifying effect" in Germany.
Hartloff's comments were seconded by Michael Frieser, an expert on integration issues for the Conservatives in the German parliament. He told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he has nothing against Muslim immigrants seeking judgments according to their own legal systems. "That can ultimately serve the cause of integration," Frieser said.
In March, Muslim mobs in Berlin threatened to "burn down the neighborhood" after a German fatally stabbed an 18-year-old Muslim, in what police deemed was an act of self defence. The March 9 incident occurred in the heavily Islamized Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln, when the German, Sven N., tried to stop a fight between two groups of Turks over who should get a football that had been kicked over a fence. The Turks quickly turned their anger against the German. After a group of 20 Muslims armed with knives and daggers challenged Sven, he stabbed one of the attackers, Yusef Al-Abed, in the heart. More than 3,000 Muslims attended Yusuf's funeral, evoking scenes of the Gaza Strip (photos here).
In April, Islamic radicals launched an unprecedented nationwide campaign to distribute 25 million copies of the Koran, translated into the German language, with the goal of placing one Koran into every household in Germany, free of charge.
The mass proselytization campaign -- called Project "Read!" -- was organized by dozens of Islamic Salafist groups located in cities and towns throughout Germany.
Salafism is a branch of radical Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia that seeks to establish a Sunni Islamic Caliphate (Islamic Empire) across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and eventually the entire world. The Caliphate would be governed exclusively by Islamic Sharia law, which would apply both to Muslims and to non-Muslims. Salafists believe, among other anti-Western doctrines, that democracy, because it is a man-made form of government, must be destroyed.
Although Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, regards the Salafist groups as a threat to German security, Salafists have free reign in the country, and Salafist preachers are known regularly to preach hatred against the West in the mosques and prayer centers that are proliferating across Germany.
In May, more than 500 Salafists attacked German police with bottles, clubs, stones and other weapons in the city of Bonn, to protest cartoons they said were "offensive." Rather than cracking down on the Muslim extremists, however, German authorities sought to silence the peaceful critics of multicultural policies that allow the Salafists openly to preach violence and hate.
The clashes on May 5 erupted when around 30 supporters of a conservative political party, PRO NRW, which is opposed to the further spread of Islam in Germany, participated in a campaign rally ahead of regional elections in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW).
Some of those participating in the rally, which was held near the Saudi-run King Fahd Academy in the Mehlem district of Bonn, the former capital of West Germany, had been waving banners depicting the Islamic Prophet Mohammad (see photo here), to protest the Islamization of Germany.
The rally swiftly disintegrated into violence (photos here and here) when hundreds of angry Salafists, who are opposed to any depiction of their prophet, began attacking the police, whose job it was to keep the two groups apart.
In the final tally of the melee, 29 police officers were injured, two with serious stab wounds, and more than 100 Salafists were arrested, although most were later released. According to Bonn's police chief, Ursula Brohl-Sowa, "This was an explosion of violence such as we have not witnessed in a long time."
In June, German authorities launched a major crackdown on Salafists suspected of plotting against the state. In nation-wide raids on June 14, over 1,000 German police searched about 70 Salafist homes, apartments, mosques and meeting places in seven of Germany's 16 states, in search of evidence that would enable the German government to outlaw some of the dozens of Islamist groups operating in the country.
In a June 8 interview with the newspaper Die Welt, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said: "Radical Salafism is like a hard drug. All of those who succumb to her become violent."
Also in June, German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière announced his intention to "multiculturalize" the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) by recruiting more Muslims into its ranks.
Germany formally discontinued compulsory military service on July 1, 2011 as part of a comprehensive reform aimed at creating a smaller and more agile army of about 185,000 professional soldiers. But Germany's new all-volunteer army has been unable to meet its recruiting goals, and military manpower prospects look dim for the foreseeable future.
In a desperate search for soldiers, German military officials have now identified Germany's Muslim Turkish population (3.5 million and counting) as a new source for potential recruits.
In August, German Intelligence Chief Gerhard Schindler issued a warning saying that Europe is at great risk of terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists.
In a wide-ranging interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, Schindler said the German foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), is particularly concerned about the threat posed by homegrown terrorists, individuals who were either born or raised in Europe and who travel to war zones like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen to obtain training in terrorist methods.
Schindler's warning came amid the backdrop of a high-security court trial of four suspected Al Qaeda members, which began in the German city of Düsseldorf on July 25. German public prosecutors say the defendants -- three homegrown Islamists born in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and one Moroccan national -- were planning to stage a "sensational terror attack" in Germany.
Also known as the "Düsseldorfer Cell," the defendants were also accused of plotting to assassinate the former commander of German Special Forces (KSK Kommando Spezialkräfte) as well as to attack the US Army base in the Bavarian town of Grafenwöhr.
Also in August, a new survey of Turkish-German mores and attitudes found that nearly half of all Turks living in Germany say they hope there will be more Muslims than Christians in Germany in the future.
The 103-page study, "German-Turkish Life and Values" (abridged version in German here), found that Islam is becoming an increasingly important component of the value structure of Turks in Germany, especially among the younger generation of Turkish-Germans, who hold religious views more radical than those held by their elders.
In September, a German court in Kassel refused to allow a Muslim student to skip co-ed swimming lessons based on her religious beliefs.
The closely watched case highlighted the growing number of conflicts between German school officials and Muslim parents who, for religious reasons, want to keep their children from participating in sports activities, biology classes and field trips.
The presiding judge, Hans Rothaug, declared: "The applicant should have attended swimming lessons. In this particular case, there are no grounds for exemptions."
In October, a court in Bonn sentenced an Islamist radical to six years in prison for stabbing two German police officers during the protest against "offensive" cartoons in Bonn.
Murat K, a 26-year-old German-born Salafist of Turkish heritage from the western state of Hessen, openly admitted that he had attacked and wounded the two police officers with a kitchen knife during the cartoon riots in May. He showed no remorse during his trial, saying only that he had been morally obligated to follow Islamic Sharia law.
Murat, whose last name has not been made known to the general public due to German privacy laws, claimed that the attacks on the police officers were justified because the German state had allowed offensive images of the Prophet Mohammed to be shown in public.
Murat responded to the verdict by declaring German courts to be illegitimate. He said: "I do not accept this court as legitimate. I am not sitting here voluntarily. Only Allah alone has the right to decide what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil, what is moral and what is immoral." Murat added: "I will answer only to Allah."
In an October 19 interview with the German newsmagazine FOCUS, the Secretary General of the ruling Christian Democratic Party (CDU), Hermann Gröhe, said the conviction of Murat makes it clear that Germany will not allow radical Muslims to "lead a religious war on German streets."
In November, Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, concluded a "historic treaty" with its Muslim communities that grants Muslims broad new rights and privileges but does little to encourage their integration into German society.
The November 13 agreement, signed by Hamburg's Socialist Mayor Olaf Scholz and the leaders of four Muslim umbrella groups, was praised by the proponents of multiculturalism for putting the northern port city's estimated 200,000 Muslims on an equal footing with Christian residents.
The most controversial part of the accord involves a commitment by the city government to promote the teaching of Islam in the Hamburg public school system. The agreement grants the leaders of Hamburg's Muslim communities a determinative say in what will be taught by allowing them to develop the teaching curriculum for Islamic studies.
On November 30, the northern German city of Bremen followed Hamburg's lead by concluding its own treaty [Staatsvertrag] with the local Muslim community. The Socialist mayor of Bremen, Jens Böhrnsen, said the treaty reflects "mutual recognition and respect of mutual values."
Critics, however, say the agreements, the first of their kind in Germany, will boost the growing influence of Islam in the country by encouraging the perpetuation of a Muslim parallel society.
Also in November, a new research survey found that Germans are overwhelmingly mistrustful of Islam and Muslim immigration.
The 28-page study, "Fear of the East in the West" (Die Furcht vor dem Morgenland im Abendland), was produced by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research, and was published by the center-right German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on November 21.
The research showed that more than half of the German population believes that Islam is prone to violence (64%); has a tendency toward revenge and retaliation (60%); is obsessed with proselytizing others (56%); and strives for political influence (56%).
More than 80% of Germans believe that Islam deprives women of their rights, and 70% say Islam is associated with religious fanaticism and radicalism. By contrast, only 13% of Germans associate Islam with love for neighbors, 12% with charity and 7% with openness and tolerance.
The study concluded that the image of Islam in Germany is "devastating." The findings -- which corroborate the conclusions of other recent studies -- underscore a growing divide between ordinary Germans, who are concerned about the consequences of mass immigration from Muslim countries, and Germany's political elites, who are determined to build a "multicultural" society at any cost.
In December, German authorities said Islamic extremists were behind a botched bomb attack at the main train station in Bonn. In the December 10 incident, a man allegedly linked to Al Qaeda left a bag containing a bomb on a platform at the train station. Authorities say the detonator was activated, but failed to cause an explosion.
Also in December, a militant Salafist group released several videos calling on its followers to take German hostages in an effort to secure the release of Murat K, the Islamist who is currently serving a six-year prison sentence for stabbing two policemen in Bonn in May.
The videos promise that "we will not rest until we have freed you from captivity." In one of the videos, a man speaking German with a foreign accent says: "Everyone who offends the Prophet will be slaughtered, whether near or far. And know this, brother, the Germans are easy enough to reach. We will take them prisoners, until you are free for your noble deed."More...